Were adults such as teachers ever hateful to you when you were small?

[Toughsuitofarmour]

Just something on my mind today. It strikes me as bizarre when looking back, how contemptuous and cold certain adults were to me when I was a child. A couple of teachers, a sports coach, etc.

I was born to an unmarried mother in Ireland over thirty years ago and wonder if maybe part of it was because of that. My grandparents were well regarded in the community though.

One of the adults in my home life was a bit of a bully, which definitely affected my self-esteem, and I wonder if these other adults who were scornful of me maybe picked up on some vulnerability in me - combined with their ideas that I was 'illegitimate', maybe that was their justification because somebody like me didn't count? I don't know.

I'm not talking about anything extreme and I had lots of nice other teachers and neighbours too!

The whole thing though makes me think that was a mad way to behave - I couldn't imagine saying nasty things to a child, or going out of my way make them feel small, or ignoring a distressed child.

Was childhood just a bit tougher back then for everyone? Did people not think much of how their words or actions could impact on small kids?

My french teacher took me outside to ask me ‘was I actually as thick as I seem or is something going on’ as I was in top sets for everything yet couldn’t get french. He picked on me every session and I just mumbled through it. Turns out learning a second language when you’re severely dyslexic (yet very clever at covering it up) is very difficult! I’ve been a teacher now for 10 years and even when super stressed I always take the approach of a child isn’t ‘getting it’ it’s my fault for not showing them the way, not their fault for being lost! Hate that gnome man even now! 😡

I was always tall, dark, gangly and maybe even a little ‘butch’ as a child and I had a couple of teachers who very obviously only liked the cute petite blonde girls in my class

Yes, the blonde girls were massively favoured in my school too. Makes my blood boil now.

I had a really horrible teacher in year 1. Just vile. I think she got a power kick out of being cruel to 5 year olds.

Years later a couple of old school friends and I were talking about this on Facebook. (Stupid I know, but this was when social media was very new and I was quite naive about how public it was). Someone tagged her in the comments so she saw the conversation. She messaged me a barrage of abuse, talking about how pathetic I’d been as a child. When I didn’t respond, she got her two adult daughters to send me abuse too. Very strange.

I was an incredibly shy, anxious child who was mute for part of my schooling, so I have absolutely no idea why she’d been so affected by me. Of course it can’t have been nice to see former students saying how unkind she’d been, but to then send very specific insults related to my character as a 4 year old? Bizarre!

I happen to be a former teacher too, so I can’t even understand it from that angle. Some kids didn’t like me, some did. Their opinions about me these days has absolutely no impact on my life.

We had a dreadful biology teacher in secondary school. He really was nasty, went out of his way to ridicule his pupils and shouted, screamed and terrified the class.

He had absolutely no patience for anyone or anything and if you didn't understand what he was trying to teach he just fumed at you.

He really was in the wrong job. I'm sure he was very clever but just had no aptitude for teaching.

When I got good grades he pulled me aside and asked me to study higher biology but I could stand the thought of another year in his class and went for social subjects instead.

I don't think anyone in our class took biology in higher which is a real shame.

My aunts and next door neighbour. Always making nasty little comments about my weight and appearance.

I would love to bring it up now with my aunts but they would just dismiss it. Looking back now I am really hurt that my mum didn’t stand up for me. She always had an inferiority complex (particularly about wealth) so always let people treat us badly and almost expected it.

My Y4 teacher, Mr H. PE teacher.

He was horrendous to me.

Parents just divorced (it was violent and abusive)
Violent arguments between DM and DSis.
DM emotional and battered but doing her best.
Moved out to countryside so no family support.
No friends at school.

He was horrible. Just horrible. He picked on me every day. He would make me stand up in front of the class and I hated it. I hated him.

Wasnt until DM went to parents evening and heard him speak about me in such a negative way that she pulled him up on it (says alot as he majority of my parents evenings were usually about me being distracted and not paying attention- but this one was different).

If I saw him today, I would give him a piece of mind and I dont think I'd be able to stay very calm. I qualified as a teacher in 2011 and I would NEVER speak to a child like that every single school day. Especially not a primary school child going through such a tough time.

In infants second year (we didn't have years 1,2 etc then) the teacher pulled my pants down and smacked my bare bottom in front of the class. Bitch. In high school the head of year pinned me against the wall for being cheeky. I was actually quite well behaved. God knows what happened if you were really naughty.

I think humiliation and ridicule were much more considered an acceptable tool to use in schools.

Not nearly as bad, but remember being told off for always putting my hand up (I’m such a try-hard!) I always got “let someone else have a turn” like how does that work? You’re the one asking the question and telling to put our hand up if we have the answer, then you the teacher picks someone who has their hand up.

Year 7, I had an awful teacher, asked me if I was stupid in front of the whole class. She was well known to pupils and staff as a dragon and had been there for years, why senior leadership inflicted her on year 7 I will never know and it still makes me angry sometimes when I think about how she was allowed to behave. I used to pretend to be ill so I could get the day off when I had her subject. This was the late 90s.

I had a really nasty teacher when I was about 6 or 7, she and another teacher, her sidekick, liked to pick on certain kids. I remember one little boy crying when he had to go into her classroom. Eventually, parents started picking up on it and complaining, they were a pair of real, nasty bitches.

I always remember a scrap yard as well, my dad was really into cars and car repairs, I liked to go with him. One of the mechanics when his back was turned was really nasty/borderline weird. When I mentioned it to my dad later, we never went back, and he was not the most sympathetic/tuned in of dads.

My year 5 teacher stood me up in front of the whole class and gave me a shouty dressing down about being a waste of desk and chair, time, and oxygen. I'd forgotten a piece of homework. My parents only found out because other kids went home and told their parents, and their parents rang mine to see if I was ok.

I was a child in the sixties. I remember one horrible teacher who used to yell and scream at us if we got our maths wrong. Then she went off sick and later my mum told me she'd died. I remember saying "Oh good," and my mum was shocked.

The replacement teacher was no better. She slapped us if we did anything wrong. I was only six. I'm sure I should feel more traumatised than I do.

Secondary teachers were not nice. One of the worst is now a pillar of my family parish church. I’m very glad I didn’t see him at my dad’s funeral the other week or I might have done something unfortunate.

Another un-necessarily nasty infant school teacher. I think she did have good intentions in there somewhere and she wanted us all to learn and to succeed, but she could have done that without the atrocious and unpredictable temper, complete lack of sympathy and occasional physical violence that no-one believed us about. When I hear she'd died, a small part of me was relieved that she'd never get to reduce another four year old to tears again.

I was absolutely terrified of my friend's mum but I didn't have the vocab to explain and no-one believed me anyway. She dragged me out of a car and slapped me hard once because the door had come open while the car was moving. I hadn't touched the door, it was nothing to do with me that her car was an unroadworthy heap of shit. She was fond of meting out weird punishments to her kids as well, which tended to involve them stripping naked. If I'd come across that as an adult, I'd have called social services.

I was bullied and humiliated regularly by teachers at my prep school. Par for the course there.
Can't remember it anywhere else.

I had a teacher take a dislike to a 4 year old me. Apparently I was disruptive etc. It's funny as no other teacher ever said that. It was always "we wish the class was full of tiredmums" etc. I never had a bad school report. I look back and and remember knowing she didn't like me and not knowing why as I was a very easy going laid back happy child 🤷🏼‍♀️.

I remember another teacher putting pepper on one boys younger. Can't remember what he'd done! We were in year 2! Shocking!!

I’m a teacher and looking back at my primary school we had one teacher who was very odd. I often used to daydream and this one teacher made me take my socks and knickers off and sit on the cold floor (the bit where there was no carpet) I still remember the feeling of my legs being cold and numb. I never told my mum because I didn’t want her to know that I got in trouble

I moved to a different town at Easter in grade 2. I went from a smallish class with a teacher I loved to a large class with a teacher who apparently took an immediate dislike to me. She was downright mean and dismissive, marking great red x's on my work because I did not format the page the way she wanted. She drilled the class on times tables with a stopwatch. I was a geeky and sensitive perfectionist kid to begin with, but she absolutely terrified me.

My report card had big "C" letter grades instead of the A and B marks I had been receiving at my old school.

In early grade 3 I was being sick every night after I went to bed. My poor parents had to clean up every night. It turned out I had a stomach ulcer at the tender age of 7 or 8. This was in the early 1960s.

I don't know if the ulcer was due to my reaction to the move/teacher or something else. But that teacher petrified me. I suppose it could be somehow related to the fact that I developed ulcerative colitis in later life, but I am sure the sheer terror did not help!

I still remember with horror the tests I had to diagnose the ulcer, including a barium swallow.

It took ages for the ulcer to heal with a special diet, drinking milk, and taking an unknown medication 1/2 hour before meals. This required me to carry a thermos of milk and go to the back of the class to drink milk and take a pill 1/2 hour before lunch. Of course, my grade 3 teacher made sufficient fuss about this that I was teased and bullied.

Teachers are so important. DH had a long career as a teacher and I know was really aware of the impact teachers have. I don't think any of this would happen today.

Yes, my reception teacher was nasty as were all the dinner ladies who forced us to eat things we didn't like and I remember wouldn't even let a boy get up when he vomited on his plate.

My ballet teacher destroyed my confidence and self esteem, used to hit us with tap shoes, humiliate me in front of the other girls and encourage their bullying of me because I was deemed too tall to ever be a dancer (I was fairly tall but not extremely - I'm 5'9 but have always had a complex about it). Bitch.

The kind of humiliation you see in the book Kes from PE staff in particular was accepted.

As a teacher myself I simply cannot understand this behaviour - but it wasn't a child-centric world then the way it is now. Children fitted around adult lives and punishment/humiliation was normalised.

When the teacher asked a question and most put their hands up to answer, why did the teacher then pick on someone who hadn’t put their hand up and ask them the answer. The humiliation of having to explain that you didn’t know the answer when most apparently did was awful. Consequently, I always put my hand up with the others and just hoped I wasn’t asked if I didn’t know the answer!!!

I had a few horrendous teachers, and it's only now that I see how lovely and enthusiastic my daughters teachers are that I realise how bad mine were. This was in the early 80s and most of the bad ones were older women who must have started their careers in the 50s, I always put their meanness down to the possibility that they were clever women who were never allowed a choice of career as teaching was pretty much it for women in those days but had never married either. Not sure if that is actually true though. I also remember several times when they taught us things that were just plain wrong and I thought that might be due to them not having proper training.

Omg this has brought back memories of my yr 6 teacher on 'library day' one day. She asked those pupils who had forgotten to bring their books to school to put their hands up. I must have brushed my hand through my hair or something because when I went to the desk to hand my book in (that I had fucking brought to school, like i was supposed to!) she got into a full blown argument with me, adamant that I'd put my hand up earlier saying I'd forgotten it. Even got one of the other kids to back her up ( as if they would have argued with her the way she was shouting). Being a bit of a hot headed gobshite myself I stormed out of the library and slammed the door, and refused to go back in. My mum (also a gobshite) went into school the next day and had it out with her.
Had I have been a less confident kid, and didn't have my mum backing me up I think it would have really affected me, she was so awful, trying to undermine a 10 yr old in front of the whole class.

Over the years I thought it must have been a false memory but I distinctly remember a teacher from when I was 7 who hit me for not singing along to a song I had never heard before. I loved singing and remembered songs but my mum was a young single parent also and sometimes struggled to get me into school some days, so I had a of time off. I was too scared to tell her that I was not at school when the class was taught this song 😞.
Just teared up writing that down.

Primary school 1970s. Horrible dinner lady seemed to enjoy humiliating and punishing the kids for not being able to eat/finish the muck on offer.
Constantly nasty to me as i was a very fussy child and skinny as well. Told me if i didnt eat i would die and be a skeleton.
My mum told me she found out coz i had nightmares screaming about it and went up to the school.
Dont remember if she was fired or left but apparently lots of parents complained.
Evil cow also refused to let us in to the classroom to get our coats if we got cold and she was on playground duty.
And my darling lovely form teacher who told me to speak properly...we had just moved to the south of England from Aberdeen. I had a Scottish accent ffs.
She s dead now (happened while i was still at the school).
Nothing much at secondary except the PE teachers were always bullying us to run around like headless chickens even if we had deathly monstrous period pains ( "exercise is good for that").